The Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge won't help Samsung much, but the Gear 360 might

Remember last year's Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge, the company's best-designed phones ever? Well, Samsung now thinks it understands why you didn't buy them. And the new Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge are meant both as a response and a de facto apology.

Not that the S6 phones were a disaster. They had polished design — the S6 Edge was notably the first Samsung phone with two curved sides — as well as impressive features like wireless charging and a new mobile payments system, Samsung Pay. But while the phones were great devices, they were too much like, ahem, a certain competitor.

"Fundamentally it looked like the iPhone. I think that hamstrung them with that model," analyst Tim Bajarin, chief of Creative Strategies, told Mashable. "They had problems with differentiation."

A Galaxy far, far away

What Bajarin means isn't that customers somehow got confused when shopping for a phone and couldn't spot the Galaxy in the crowd of iPhones. No, what Samsung missed was that, in trying to go toe-to-toe with Apple on design and high-end features, it overlooked some of the best reasons to opt for a Samsung instead of an Apple.

For starters, the Galaxy S6/S6 Edge didn't have a removable battery, meaning users wouldn't be able to swap in a fresh one in a pinch. It also dropped one of the much-touted features of the Galaxy S5: water resistance.

Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge hands on

Two sizes, same power

The Galaxy S7 is the smaller model and has a flat 5.1-inch screen. The Galaxy S7 Edge is the larger of the two and has a 5.5-inch screen with two curved edges on the front. Both phones have QuadHD resolutions, Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processors and 4GB of RAM.

Image: Tyler Essary/Mashable

Refined design

The Galaxy S7 (left) vs. the Galaxy S7 Edge (right). The phones are as gorgeous as the previous S6 and S6 Edge, but the metal frame is now softer and fits better in your hand.

Image: Tyler Essary/Mashable

Gently curved sides

The backside of the Galaxy S7 has curved sides like the Galaxy Note 5.

Image: Tyler Essary/Mashable

Metal frame

The GS7 and GS7 have solid aluminum frames.

Image: Tyler Essary/Mashable

Fingerprint magnet

Sadly, the GS7 and GS7 Edge are still fingerprint magnets. Keep a microfiber handy.

Image: Tyler Essary/Mashable

Water resistance

Water resistance is back on the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge. It can take a dunk in up to five feet of water for up to 30 minutes.

Image: Tyler Essary/Mashable

Expandable storage

In the U.S., the base models of the GS7 and GS7 Edge will come with 32GB of internal storage. But you can also expand that storage up to 200GB via microSD card. Yep, the memory card slot is back!

Image: Tyler Essary/Mashable

Killer camera

Samsung's downgraded the resolution from 16 megapixels on the GS6 to 12 megapixels, but the aperture is now a larger f/1.7 lens, which lets in a lot more light. As a result, low-light performance is great.

Image: Tyler Essary/Mashable

Super fast autofocus

The new 12-megapixel back camera takes great low-light photos.

Image: Tyler Essary/Mashable

Regular ol' Micro USB

There's no reversible USB Type-C port on the GS7 and GS7 Edge. The phones do support fast charging and fast wireless charging, though.

Image: Tyler Essary/Mashable

Always on display

Both phones have an always-on display for showing lightweight widgets like a clock, calendar or notifications without having to turn the entire screen on.

Image: Tyler Essary/Mashable

More shortcuts

Apps Edge, the "edge" tab that you can slide out on the Galaxy S7 Edge now has room for up to 10 app shortcuts.

Image: Tyler Essary/Mashable

Third-party Edge apps

In addition to all the other special Edge features, Samsung is also allowing third-party developers to get in on the action with their own widget panels. Here's Yahoo News.

Image: Tyler Essary/Mashable

Galaxy S7 vs. iPhone 6

A size comparison between the GS7 and the iPhone 6.

Image: Tyler Essary/Mashable

Selfie camera

There's a 5-megapixel front-facing camera.

Image: Tyler Essary/Mashable

But perhaps worst of all, Samsung's flagship phones no longer included a microSD card slot for extra storage — just as mobile devices beginning to rely more than ever on storage because of technologies like 4K video and virtual reality. What's more, using microSD storage is popular in many markets that are extremely price sensitive, since it's usually cheaper to get a low-capacity phone with a microSD card than buy a high-capacity model. The slot is also a desired feature for many enterprise customers.

"The microSD card [issue] really hurt them in the business market," says mobile analyst Jan Dawson of Jackdaw Research. "There are certain parts of the business market that really want that microSD card."

Certainly, iPhones boast none of those features either, and it hasn't stopped them from dominating the high end. But those who opt for Android are often doing so to get what they can't get from Apple.

Lucky number seven?

Samsung thinks it's gotten things right now. The Galaxy S7 phones bring back the microSD card slot and water resistance, the latter being much improved (this time there's no plastic tab over the USB port). The batteries still aren't removable, but they're considerably bigger.

At the same time, the Edge model gets a size upgrade, expanding from 5.1 inches to 5.5. After the fall's 5.7-inch Galaxy S6 Edge+, Samsung appears to have decided its Edge phones work best as a fun size, and it's introduced even more functionality in the edge panels. Things like the stock ticker and news headlines are larger, and some of the tricks from the original Galaxy Note Edge (like the ruler) are back.

The edge panel on the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge has some upgrades over the GS6 models.

Image: Tyler Essary/Mashable

One thing that Samsung isn't offering its customers is any kind of response or imitation to 3D Touch, the haptic technology that lets iPhone users "peek" and "pop" through apps and content via a pressure-sensitive screen.

"One of the things we tend to see is that hidden UI, for consumers, people can't find it," Drew Blackard, director of product marketing for Samsung America, told me when I asked about the feature. "So if there's a gesture associated — if I have to press really hard to do something — I don't really know it's there, so I don't do it."

Galactic ambitions

So with a renewed emphasis on pleasing its hardcore audience, will the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge be enough for Samsung to renew its momentum in mobile?

Bajarin and Dawson agree that it's doubtful. While Samsung has been swinging and missing against the iPhone for years (its last big hit was the Galaxy S III in 2012), it's also seen the rest of the market fall out from under it.

"[The new phones] will be helpful, but i don't think anything will dramatically increase sales," says Dawson. "In reality, what's going on with Samsung's phones has much less to do with specific phones or features and much more to do with what's going on in the market."

Newcomers like Xiaomi well as ambitious Chinese mobile companies like Huawei and ZTE have captured huge swaths of the midrange and low-end market with phones that boast great performance for less than half the price of Samsung's Galaxy flagships. The high end of Android, while certainly not dying, is becoming a lonelier place.

Given market forces, then, can anything give Samsung the momentum it craves? Competent phones are good, but the company's ongoing bid to be synonymous with mobile VR could be a smart bet. As VR (and its cousin, 360-degree video) slowly make inroads into the mainstream, Samsung stands ready with a fully formed VR ecosystem with its Gear VR headset as well as the new, ball-shaped Gear 360 camera.

Samsung Gear 360 hands on

Ball cam

The Samsung Gear 360 is a ball-shaped 360-degree camera that fits in the palm of your hand.

Image: Tyler Essary/Mashable

Homemade VR

With the Gear VR headset, Galaxy S7 and the Gear 360, you've got all you need to shoot, edit, share and view VR.

Image: Tyler Essary/Mashable

Ultra-wide lens

There are two fisheye lenses with f/2.0 apertures on each side of the camera. Each one records at 195-degrees and then they're stitched together into a 360-degree video, which can then be viewed with a VR headset.

Image: Tyler Essary/Mashable

On its head

Recording 360-degree video is as easy as pressing the record button. There's also a tiny LCD screen.

Image: Tyler Essary/Mashable

Removable stuff

The battery and microSD card are hidden inside of this flap.

Image: Tyler Essary/Mashable

Comes with a tripod

The Gear 360 uses a universal tripod mount, but it also comes with its own mini foldable tripod.

Image: Tyler Essary/Mashable

"The Gear VR could be one of their aces in the hole for them to sell more smartphones, at least this year," says Bajarin. "There's now a tremendous amount of VR content that's aimed at a much broader market."

However you slice it, though, VR is a long-term play, while the Galaxy phones are very much the here and now. Samsung's new devices will probably win back a few of the faithful who may have strayed after they didn't see satisfaction in last year's models. But, no matter how good they are, the best Samsung can really hope for is that they don't crash and burn.

Bonus: First look: Samsung Gear 360 consumer VR camera

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